What Does Leviticus 11:29 Mean in the King James?
These also shall be unclean unto you among the creeping things that creep upon the earth; the weasel, and the mouse, and the tortoise after his kind,
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew says “the swarm that swarms,” so what English narrows to creeping motion carries the wider force of teeming life.
THE MEANING
The verse gives you a concrete boundary: these named creatures belong to the unclean category for you. Its doubled swarm-language emphasizes their teeming movement across the earth, while “unclean” names a ritual status rather than moral worth.
THE ROOT
בַּשֶּׁרֶץ הַשֹּׁרֵץ
bash-sheretz ha-shoretz
GROWS FROM
שׁרץ
sh-r-ts
To swarm, teem, or multiply abundantly
“creeping things that creep” in this verse is bash-sheretz ha-shoretz. English repeats “creep,” making the category sound like motion close to the ground. Hebrew repeats the swarm-root; elsewhere it describes waters teeming with life and people multiplying, while the verse’s separate word “unclean” supplies the ritual boundary.
ALSO GROWS
sheretz: A swarming or teeming creature
שֶׁרֶץ
This is the noun behind “creeping things”; the root describes abundant movement without itself meaning evil or unclean.
sharats: To swarm, teem, or multiply
שָׁרַץ
Genesis 1:20 uses this root for the waters bringing forth living creatures abundantly; Exodus 1:7 uses it for Israel multiplying.
טָמֵא
tamei
GROWS FROM
טמא
ṭ-m-ʾ
To be unclean or ritually impure
Here “unclean” places these creatures within a ritual category. The same word describes Isaiah’s lips, showing that this vocabulary reaches beyond animal classification while retaining its language of impurity.
ALSO GROWS
tamei: Unclean or impure
טָמֵא
This is the word applied to the named creatures in the verse and to Isaiah’s lips in Isaiah 6:5.
tum'ah: Uncleanness or impurity
טֻמְאָה
This noun names the state of uncleanness and makes clear that the verse describes a status, not a creature’s moral character.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes the clean and unclean boundary concrete through named conditions, then revisits how far that label extends.
And for these ye shall be unclean: whosoever toucheth the carcase of them shall be unclean until the even.Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.And he said unto them, Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.THE THREAD
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.“Bring forth abundantly” translates the same שׁרץ root found in “creeping things that creep” here. Genesis uses it for waters teeming with living creatures, so the root carries abundance and movement; uncleanness is the verse’s distinct classification, not the root’s meaning.
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